Well Beyond Rivers: Alumni Pursue Wellness Professions

Butler is one of many Rivers alums working in wellness-related fields. Amid the commercialization of wellness, these alums are driven by hard work, human connection, and the power of helping others—values that, for many, took root during their time at Rivers.

“When I got to Rivers, the two things that stuck out were the culture and the community,” says physical therapist Brendan Gates ’14. The culture at Rivers instilled in him a strong work ethic and time management skills, he says, and the community served him beyond his four years on campus.

Because of a lacrosse recruitment, Gates had known since his junior year where he would go to college. But during his first semester there, he started to doubt whether the school was the right academic fit. He reached out to Rivers Director of College Counseling Dave Lyons ’99, P’30, ’32 for guidance. “‘I just don’t know what to do,’” Gates recalls telling Lyons. “And Mr. Lyons said, ‘When you come home for winter break, let’s go get a coffee. We’ll talk about everything.’”

By that point, Gates knew he wanted to be a physical therapist. That winter break conversation with Lyons helped him think through the steps he would need to take to make that goal a reality. Gates ultimately made the most of his undergraduate experience, using it as a springboard to pursue a physical therapy degree in graduate school. “I credit that all to the foundation of Rivers,” he says. 

Pediatric dentist Adam Lowenstein ’10 feels similarly indebted to the school, saying, “I learned how to learn at Rivers.” 

By not losing sight of the importance of meaningful connection and a strong foundation, these Rivers alums keep themselves grounded and, whether they are in a training room or a dental office, they support others in doing the same. 

Saipriya Valoth ’15 learned a lot at Rivers, but a particular course stands out: Thanksgiving Undone, a history elective taught by Ben Leeming P’17, ’19, ’21, ’23, which broke down the dominant narrative around the U.S. holiday. Valoth, now a mental health counselor, describes the course as “paradigm-shifting” for her. 

“You might think it’s not totally related to being a therapist or to wellness,” she says, “But that class helped plant the seeds of my perspective now, which is that wellness cannot be divorced from personal histories, our history as a country, the history of the world, and how experiences of colonization have long-lasting impacts on what we think of as ‘to be well’ or ‘to live well.’”

At Rivers and throughout college, Valoth was passionate about storytelling. Eventually, she chose to pursue psychology over a writing career. “But I think what I ended up liking about this career path is that I get to hear people’s stories, and I get to write new stories with them,” she says. 

Valoth believes connection to the self and connection to others are both essential to well-being. Another core characteristic of her practice is to acknowledge the ways systems of oppression impact mental and physical health. “The more marginalized identities you have, the more there might be burdens or feelings of loneliness, shame, or disconnection,” she says. Valoth often repeats to her clients something her own therapist told her: Identities are always in the room. Rather than pretend otherwise, Valoth says she prefers to be direct about the ways personal identities—including her own—are relevant to her work with a client.

“The world and how we’re experienced by other people create within us dominant stories. ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘I’m not capable of this,’ ‘Other people will always see me this way,’ or ‘This is who I am,’” Valoth explains. “And what I really like about this work is that with my clients, we get to name and sit with the pain of stories that we’re told to believe about ourselves, but that may not actually be true. Or, even if they are true, maybe they’re not useful. So, how do we create new stories together?”

Before having the words to describe it, Eliza Butler ’10 knew that mind-body-spirit connection mattered. She majored in psychology in college, but it wasn’t until she discovered a master’s program in integrative health that things clicked. The holistic approach to wellness at the core of integrative health practices resonated with her deeply. 

“That degree totally blew my mind wide open to all different modalities of healing,” Butler says. “We took everything from a nutrition course, to a mindfulness course, to an interpersonal neurobiology course, to an Indigenous medicine course.”

A couple of health coaching jobs and a move to Vancouver, British Columbia, later, Butler began working with officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national police service of Canada, as part of her role at an integrative wellness clinic. “I noticed that a lot of the health habits of that demographic were not due to lack of motivation or knowledge, but were rooted in deeper traumas and systemic issues outside of their control,” Butler says. “It felt silly that we were making health goals of drinking more water, when it was clear so many of these men and women were suffering from PTSD, anxiety, depression, etc.”

Butler found herself wanting to dive into those issues with the officers who were her clients. “But I couldn’t with my scope of practice—I wasn’t trained in that way,” she says. “So, I decided that I wanted to go back to school for counseling.” Now, Butler is a full-time somatic psychotherapist with her own practice, All Parts Wellness. She’s based in the U.S., but she works with clients from all over the world.

Wellness, Butler emphasizes, is not about “fixing” yourself. “It’s connection, finding a sense of belonging. It’s moving your body in a way that feels good and supportive. It’s eating whole foods and drinking water. It’s orienting yourself to joy and to pleasure in your day-to-day life,” she says. 

“We can’t heal in isolation. We can’t be well in isolation. I think we’re sold this idea of self help, self healing, that we can do it all on our own—and we can’t,” Butler adds. “That’s a really important thing that I want people to know: We need each other to be well.”

“The end of the story is that I became a physical therapist,” says Brendan Gates ’14. “And the way I got there was because of Rivers.”

A shoulder injury during football season the fall of his senior year was a formative experience. “All I knew was I wanted to keep playing sports as long as I could,” he says. “When you get hurt and taken out of your sport, there’s a little bit of an identity crisis that happens.”

Rivers Athletic Trainer Myron Mentis played a key role in helping him navigate that injury. Gates was able to recover without needing surgery—and in time to make it back onto the lacrosse field in his final semester. 

Mentis did more than help Gates get back in the game: He inspired his career path. Between Gates’ own injury recovery experience and taking Mentis’ sports medicine elective at Rivers, he saw how meaningful that kind of work could be, and he realized it was a way to stay around athletics beyond his years as a student-athlete. 

After four years of playing Division I collegiate lacrosse, Gates headed to graduate school to become a physical therapist. “My identity shifted a little bit,” he says. “I went from being the athlete to finding a new identity of helping other people.” 

Now at Champion Physical Therapy and Performance in Needham, MA, Gates has worked with clients anywhere from age 8 to age 82, including many high school athletes. The recovery process from an injury can be long—a torn ACL, for example, might take a year to treat. “When you’re 14 years old, a year is a significant chunk of your life. These kids are really struggling with that,” Gates says. “We have some deep, heart-to-heart conversations.”

Gates’ favorite part of a given day is witnessing a client’s improvement, even if it’s just a small step in the right direction. And his favorite part of the job overall is to see those high schoolers fully recover. After all, he knows firsthand how that feels.

“Going to watch one of the kids’ games, their first game back after a whole year off or something—that’s a lot of fun,” Gates says. “It’s really cool to be a part of that.”

When Chrissy Lee ’04 arrived at Rivers as a Grade 10 student, athletics were essential to helping her settle in. Her cross-country coaches, Stephen Paluseo and Paul Karasch, “were amazing,” she says. “They really got my confidence up and taught me to push myself.”

Her teachers helped with that, too. At Rivers, Lee found herself enjoying some subjects for the first time, like history with Bruce Taylor ’73. Physics with Stewart Pierson P’17, ’22, ’23 also stands out in her memory. “It was something I never expected to be particularly good at or like,” she says. “But he made it an enjoyable thing.”

When she got to college, Lee quickly found herself pursuing a career in athletic training. “The health field was where I was leaning toward, and pairing that with athletics made sense for me,” she says. After graduation, she got a job at a physical therapy company in New York City. “It was a great experience because of the people I worked with,” she says. “I also learned a lot from there about what I want and don’t want in life.” 

Later, Lee joined a physical therapy clinic that also contracted with local schools. “That’s how I ended up at the school I’m at now, because I was contracted out to them, and they took me on full time eventually,” she says.

She’s been at Convent of the Sacred Heart, a pre-K to Grade 12 independent school for girls in New York City, for over 10 years now. “I’m glad I experienced the physical therapy clinic setting, but I found I really enjoy being in a school,” Lee says. “And I’ve been at Sacred Heart long enough now that I’ve seen students from the age of 6 who I’m now seeing graduate.”

  

In addition to appreciating the strong relationships she formed with coaches and teachers at Rivers, Lee continues to be inspired by Rivers Athletic Trainer Myron Mentis, whom she describes as “supportive, honest, and unwavering in his dedication.” 

“Seeing that level of care up close at Rivers not only inspired my professional direction, but also continues to influence how I build relationships with the students I work with now,” Lee says.

For Adam Lowenstein ’10, Rivers felt like an inevitability. His father, a proud alumnus, made sure Lowenstein and his sister knew all about Rivers from a young age.

“The school always felt like such a backbone in our lives,” Lowenstein says. “And part of the reason why I’m so happy with my life is because of how I grew up at Rivers.” 

Now, a career in pediatric dentistry seems like it was just as inevitable as attending his father’s alma mater—but it took a little longer for Lowenstein to see that. He pursued dentistry and sports journalism throughout college before ultimately becoming a pediatric dentist. 

“I went to the same high school as my dad, the same college as my mom, the same dental school as both my parents, and then I went into the same dentistry specialty as my mom,” Lowenstein says. “When you look at that perspective, apparently I just followed in their footsteps—but there was no pressure whatsoever.” 

Lowenstein practices dentistry in Framingham and Wellesley alongside his parents, and he’s also an assistant professor at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. “My passion comes from wanting to help others,” he says.

“Dentistry is such a big part of overall health,” Lowenstein explains. “You may think that you’re just going in for a cleaning, but it still affects the rest of the body.” Nutrition, for example, is one area of health that might seem separate but is very relevant to dentistry.

Especially for his youngest patients, Lowenstein hopes visits to the dentist can be fun. With positive early exposure, children can build good habits and an understanding that keeping up their dental health is important. “I try to bring as much energy as I can. I try to bring excitement,” Lowenstein says. “And I can’t believe how many fun times I’ve had recently where kids have said they want to become dentists.” 

One of the perks of a family practice is that it also offers an easy way to connect with kids who come in with their parents. “If a little one comes in with their mom or dad,” says Lowenstein, “I can say, ‘Look in the room next door—that’s my mom!’”

“Everybody needs a nurse,” says Kaitlin Davidson ’16. Though she didn’t always know what career she wanted to pursue, Davidson knew she wanted her job to feel purposeful, and she wanted to be able to do it anywhere. 

“What drew me to nursing is you get to go to sleep at the end of the day knowing that you made even a small difference in someone’s life,” she says. “And there are hospitals everywhere in the world.”

With encouragement from Rivers Director of College Counseling Dave Lyons ’99, P’30, ’32, Davidson chose Villanova University, where she could commit to a nursing track from the start. “It’s a really empowering skill set,” Davidson says. “Not many people can say, ‘I know how to save someone’s life.’” 

Now a perioperative nurse, Davidson assists with setup and patient care before, during, and after surgeries. Following through on her desire to work anywhere in the world, she relocated to Australia in 2024 and began working at the Sydney Surgical Centre.

In December 2025, Davidson found herself on the front lines of a tragedy that quickly became a global news story. While doing laundry in her Bondi Beach apartment one evening, she heard something unusual and went to her window, where she could see two men opening fire on a Hanukkah celebration at the beach. Davidson watched police take down the shooters, and without stopping to put on shoes, she ran outside.

Though the scene was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, Davidson knew what to do in an emergency and immediately put her skills to work. She remembers telling an officer: “I’m a nurse. I’m not here to make things more complicated—I’m here to help. Please bring me to whoever needs help.”

The first man Davidson assisted survived, and he later got in touch with her. “He told me, ‘I remember your face. I will never forget what you did. My family will never forget what you did. You’re the reason I’m still alive,’” she recalls. 

“The only reason that I had the courage and the skill set and the strength to take action was because I am a nurse,” Davidson says.